Business Writing 

Ever have international dealings?  Here's some help.

Scroll down more for help with your proposals.

When in Rome:

5 Surefire Tips for 

Communicating Over Borders

You’re setting up hotel reservations for your convention at an exotic foreign resort when you hear about a flood there, along with some deaths resulting from polluted drinking water. You fax or e-mail the hotel manager immediately, saying (choose one)

a. I just heard about all the people in your town killed by the water pollution;

b. We’re concerned about the terrible water pollution problem in your town;

c. What plans do you have for providing safe drinking water during our visit?

If you want a successful meeting, you choose "c." Hotel managers know what’s going on in their towns. Treating this potential problem as a fact, when it may or may not be, insults both the manager’s town and hotel. Even if you both know for sure the drinking water did kill those people, you don’t need to rub it in.

Instead, get right to what you need: assurance of a safe water supply. Without putting down anyone or anyplace, you’ve asked for what you must have—safe water.

Unintentional insults to a foreign business person, no matter how well meant, are just one of the many pitfalls of communicating over international borders. The folks in Uganda or Argentina may speak English, but that doesn’t mean they think in English, or think the way American business people do.

Sometimes you need to call in a translator, sometimes you don’t. But in either case, you need to use English language communications that translate well. Because no matter how well translated, an insult still rankles. 

You protest, "But if they speak English I can just write in English." Well, not quite. Think about how long you had to struggle to learn those #%$@ French idioms in high school. 

The non-native speaker has the very same struggle with English. This person looks up words and puzzles over phrases, just as you did in translating from French.

So how should you go about writing so that the translator can do an accurate job for you? Or so the non-native speaker can understand your English message?

There are entire books on how to do this: Internationally Yours (Houghton Mifflin) by Mary A. DeVries can help. But if communicating across borders, either in writing or in speech, is only an occasional event for you, here are some guidelines.

1. Practice respect.

Find out what title your correspondent goes by and use it. If the manager’s name is José Luca, then he’s Manager (or maybe Director) Luca or Mr. Luca to you. Most foreigners haven’t yet caught the American "first-names-only" disease.

If you don’t know the holidays observed in the country you deal with, ask about them. Your correspondent will be pleased you showed interest in local events. You'll gain by having the information you need to incorporate their holidays into your plans or to plan around them.

Also remember that their Independence Day means as much to them as the Fourth of July does to us. Just relax; your fax won’t get answered on their big holiday.

2. Simply follow the "Use SWISS cheese™" rule.

The Use Short Words in Short Sentences rule will serve you well writing for any audience, here or in any other country. Following the rule lets you avoid pomposity and pretentiousness— follow the rule and say "help me" instead of "lend me your assistance."

But don’t go too far with your short words: Non-native English speakers won’t always understand contractions such as "don’t" or "he’ll." Nor will short versions of long words, such as "ad" for "advertisement" necessarily make sense to them.

This shortness rule goes for paragraphs, too. Remember how daunting it was seeing those huge paragraphs in your translation text? Well, so are these non-English thinkers similarly put off by long paragraphs in your language. 

Start a new paragraph frequently, so none goes on for more than three or four short sentences. Look at this article as an example of how to do that.

You don't have to have more than one sentence in a paragraph, either.

3. Our everyday slang usage isn’t in their dictionaries yet so don’t use it. I heard the term "propeller head" defined on the radio today as "another word for techno-geek." Well, I understood both terms, but neither "geek" nor "techno" to say nothing of "propeller head" have reached translation dictionaries yet.

"Techno" isn’t even in my computer’s dictionary. 

A foreigner may have lived or visited in the USA and know some of the slang terms we take for granted, but you can’t count on it. Even a not-very-current expression, such as to "go postal," meaning to act violently in the workplace, may mean nothing to a British English speaker, just as their slang puzzles us. 

Slang today, standard English tomorrow (sometimes). For now, wait. Always use standard English words and phrases instead.

Remember, too, to speak more slowly on the telephone than you normally do. This makes it easier for the non-native speaker to keep up with you. Or for the translator to do her job.

4. Avoid any expression not literally true, with great emphasis on "literally."

In a translation gaffe so bad it hit the front page of The Wall Street Journal, the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" came out in Japanese as "invisible, insane." 

Another famous one involved a company who suggested in their letter to a German firm that it was time to "talk turkey." The puzzled but meticulous Germans hired a translator to reply in perfect Turkish.

Classic idioms that native English speakers understand immediately just don’t resonate over borders. You’ll have to work hard to dig them out of your communications, because we take them so much for granted.

5. Try to use literal unimaginative language in simple sentences, no matter how inelegant it may sound. Elegance, like poetry, does not translate well except in the hands of the truly gifted. Meaning can and does, no matter how mediocre the translator.

These tips will take you a great way towards smooth communications, written or on the telephone, across language borders. And remember that a sincere compliment always pleases and helps ease your way, too.

Do proposals bug you? 

Here's some advice to help smooth the way.

A Winning Proposition: 

Tips on effective proposal writing writing

To raise your chances of approval, start with the reason you're writing your proposal. You’re selling. That might come as a shock to meeting planners who protest. "I’m not a salesperson, I’m a meeting planner." It’s true that you plan meetings, but like it or not, you have to sell. When you submit your proposal you are selling your ideas. And to sell anything, you have to focus on the needs and wants of the person you’re selling to.

Jeffrey Lant, author of Cash Copy: How to Offer Your Products and Services So Your Prospects Buy Them. . .Now, defines your main problem this way: "Losing proposals are about the sender or writer, not the recipient." His cure, "Take yourself out and shift the focus to the recipient exclusively."

Herman Holtz, the author of the Consultant’s Guide to Proposal Writing, puts his finger on the problem of most proposals: "They’re announcements instead of offers to do something." But if your proposal doesn’t tell others how good you are, then what does it do?

Start by asking yourself, "What will be the results?" Make a list and study it. Then out of all the results ask, "Which ones will make the client (or boss or board) happy?"

For example, what will make the board of a professional organization happy? Fewer complaints? Lower costs? Higher attendance? More renewals? You know what they're looking for because it was in your mind as you made your plans. So make a check mark by those results you feel will be the most appealing.

Take your pad of Post-it notes and write the essence of what your proposal is selling in one sentence. This will be a sentence that starts with "You get," and not "I propose." For example, "You get the training your members have requested" (for a proposal to an association). Or, "You get the destination most employees voted for last year" (for a proposal to an executive committee).

Your theme should be your strongest benefit or result. If you have trouble deciding which one of several would be the strongest one, put yourself into the minds of the recipients. Ask yourself what problems they have and where they’re most vulnerable. For example, if your potential client suffers from high turnover, your strongest point might very well be how this plan helps the firm retain employees. If association renewals have been dropping, your plan could emphasize how this convention will bring them back up.

When you have the strongest and best selling point clearly stated in one sentence, write it on your Post-it. Stick it on the frame of the computer screen, where you’ll see it as you write. You can also put it on top of the file you’re using, or on your clock. Start with this sentence, and keep coming back to it as you go through your proposal.

Use this sentence as you introduce new sections, such as by saying "To bring up new membership renewals even more, the convention will. . ." You cannot expect a reader, seeing your ideas for the first time, to supply all of the logical connections you see so clearly. Spell them out!

Write so others can read your proposal easily. The number-one need of readers is time; the number-one problem of readers is lack of it. 

So get to the point right away. Business surveys show that busy executives tend only to read conclusions. Begin with your strongest benefit and show how your ideas will bring about that result. 

Busy readers will not hang on to every word breathlessly until you get to the conclusion. Start with the conclusion and then support it.

Many people do not enjoy the writing process. It’s hard work. But there are some tricks you can use to make your proposal more interesting. First of all, tell a story. If you can tell a true story about how such a meeting helped the XYZ Corporation raise its employee retention rate from 81.7 percent to 90.3 percent, then tell it. 

And don’t tell it in the abstract. Give details. Quote the satisfied manager or one of the retained employees. Use their exact words, even if they aren’t elegantly phrased.

When it comes to elegance, forget it. Writers who use fancy language in an effort to impress don’t. One of the nice things about business writing is that the simple word is usually the most effective. To keep readers reading, keep your sentences to an average length of 12 to 15 words.

Make a short test of the effectiveness of your proposal. Take a red colored marker and underline all sentences or phrases about results. Use another color to underline everything about you, how you will do the job, your qualifications or anything else about you or your organization. 

There should be lots and lots of red. Very little in the other color. If not, fix it now.

Read and Write Again

If it’s any consolation, even the best business writers have to rewrite. And many swear by letting a piece sit for a minimum of 24 hours before they try to rewrite. When you do come back to it, read it aloud. This will reveal all of the rough bumps. 

Substitute doing, thinking, or feeling verbs for being verbs. Instead of writing "the company is engaged in providing health services insurance," put "the company sells health insurance."

Take out adjectives that nouns can replace. Instead of a "great improvement," talk about "an improvement of 11.43 percent." And wherever possible, be specific, not general. Finally, check all spelling and then proofread one more time.

Now you have a winning proposal!

END

Both articles originally appeared in Successful Meetings magazine in different form.

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